Monster Hunter Wilds' best change is to its layered armor, letting me finally run amok with dressup the way I should have always been able to

What are videogames if not a vessel for parading around all the cool fashion ensembles I've created, treating the whole thing like my own personal Paris Fashion Week? If a game lets me customise what my character is wearing, you best know I'm going to be milking the hell out of that, curating the coolest fits that'll have people taking screenshots and asking their friends "does anyone know what armor this incredibly dashing young adventurer is wearing?"

I'll always welcome anything that makes that process easier—World of Warcraft's transmogs, Final Fantasy 14's glamour dresser, and, I guess, Monster Hunter's layered armor system. Except Monster Hunter hasn't exactly always made it easy to stuff an entire wardrobe full of easily accessible, statless cosmetics.

When it introduced layered armor in Monster Hunter: World's Iceborne expansion, it was an entirely separate process from crafting regular armor. Stuff was locked behind enough quests and mountains of required materials that, in the end, I gave up and stuck to some set I grabbed during an event quest.

It was made slightly easier in Rise, though you still needed to craft the layered version separately with some Outfit Vouchers to hand. But still, I was yearning for something simpler. If I have the dang armor right here, why can't I strap it over the stuff I'm wearing for business?

Thankfully, Wilds has made it easier than ever: Get to High Rank, craft the armor and bam. Now you've got regular armor and layered armor, baby.

There've been numerous conversations around Monster Hunter Wilds' streamlining—the good, the bad, and the ugly—but the layered armor changes are undeniably a net benefit. I mean, the Monster Hunter series has so much drip it's practically drowning, and stopping me from taking full advantage of that would be a crime in any truly just society.

Every monster sports its own unique set that you can wrangle its skin, claws, and carapaces into—from Odogaron's Japanese-inspired, ninja-adjacent garb, to Blangonga's Final Fantasy 14 Dancer vibes, to Rathian's monstrously bulky plate armor. It's the kind of gear you can peep at a glance and almost immediately figure out which foe it came from, and I adore the variety of garbs available. I know we're technically hunting these things to balance out the ecosystem and what have you, but I think it's also a little bit so I get to wear their hide as a cool cape. Just a little bit that.

Alma said it was fine.

So when I'm being stopped from going all-in on mixing and matching all these rad pieces, as I often was in World and Rise, it sucks. But now that friction has been removed in Wilds, I've been able to go absolutely ham on the fit creation. Picking what clothes I want to wear has become just as much a part of my pre-hunt prep as eating, restocking my item pouch, and bringing the right weapon for the job. I'm already on the verge of running out of layered armor loadouts. I don't have a problem, you do.

I'm even more grateful for how easy layered armor is to get now thanks to Capcom making all of its armor gender-free. That means there are now two craftable sets per monster, and I fear I would've actually been driven crazy would I have been forced to engage in some roundabout method to obtain both of them each time.

It's also made me much more willing to go ahead and repeatedly hunt monsters that I might not've necessarily bothered to engage with otherwise. The little completionist rat controlling my brain has been getting way too excited over seeing every piece of High Rank armor crafted in my equipment box, and the overall ease of access has made the whole process feel more inviting and, ultimately, fun.

After all, I'm a firm believer that cosmetics should be the reward for doing the hard stuff, not an extra bonus pain in the ass after you've already done the most difficult bits. Getting to play dressup is my little treat to myself after a long day of hunting, and the less hard you make me work for it, the better.

P.S., Capcom, if you could put some more stuff in like the Blangonga top, I'd love you forever. If I were to do the maths, I'd probably come to the conclusion that it features in something like 83% of my current outfits. Possibly even more. Great top, that.